WordPress websites and data privacy – How to become cookie compliant.
When it comes to websites it can be quite difficult to build a website from scratch, as it requires a very specific set of skills. Therefore, most people choses to build a website in a content management system (CMS).
When it comes to CMS systems, there are some different options you can chose from. However, the CMS system, WordPress, might be the most popular system, as it powers over 445 million websites worldwide. Maybe you use it on your own website?
But when using a CMS system like WordPress, you need to be aware if the website complies with the legislation of data privacy. You must be aware if the website uses cookies, and if it is compliant with the European GDPR and the Californian CCPA. If your website is not compliant with the legislation, you can risk being fined.
To give you a greater understanding of why it is important for your website to be compliant with data privacy, we will shortly describe what cookies really are.
What are cookies and why do websites collect my data?
You might have heard the phrase “the internet never forgets” before, right? The reason why the internet never forgets is because of cookies. Cookies are small text files that is generated when peoples are surfing the internet and visiting websites. Every single visit and every single click you make leaves a trail, which is defines as cookies.
Websites are collecting cookies for different reasons. One reason is to make the life easier for you as a visitor on the website. Have you ever wondered how websites can remember your username from your last visit? Or have you wondered why google can automatically remember which websites that you have already visited? This is all because of cookies.
However, cookies do include data of your personal information and your online behavior, and therefore law enforcements have been put into effect to protect people against data abuse.
Data is very valuable for third parts, as it can be used to target advertisements to specific chosen people, which is based on their online behavior. Therefore, websites are required to be compliant with these legislations to give the visitor the option weather they will accept the collection of their personal data or not.
How can WordPress websites become cookie compliant?
There are many ways a WordPress website can become cookie compliant. It is of course possible to set it up yourself, but this is a very time-consuming solution, which also requires a lot of technical skills.
One of the simplest solutions is to use a WordPress cookie plugin. The great thing about a plugin is that you do not have to do anything at all. The plugin scans some of the sites on your website and sends a report back to you, which tells you weather the website is cookie compliant or not.
If not, you can activate the plugin, which makes the website compliant with the GDOR and CCPA and similar data privacy laws around the world.
